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He was very generous with the last encore. Hope others went and enjoyed as well. His Debussy was "spot-on". His pedal technique is real good. I cannot forget his performance of the mazurkas by Chopin either. He kept the melody crystal clear and sharp.

I will also be attending his next recital in NYC which consists of Beethoven sonatas. Has anyone heard his Beethoven performances before? Anyone attending that one?

I've been blessed to hear him many times in Boston. So glad you enjoyed him today. I've heard he has been unwell lately and rumors his performances have suffered. I'm so glad to hear you thought he was spot on today!!

BTW, I had the most incredible experience with someone I recognized, a pianist that I'd met exactly once, 31 years ago, at a house concert on the Upper West Side. I saw him sitting on the aisle 2 rows in front of me, went up and asked, "Is your name Roman?" Since he didn't answer right away and I thought maybe he didn't hear it clearly, I said his last name too. It wasn't that he hadn't heard.....I guess it was that he was searching his memory to remember who I was. And I couldn't believe it, but he remembered too! Before he started saying anything and as he was still having just a concentrating look, I said that we met once at a concert. He then said, "It wasn't really a concert..........and this was more than 30 years ago." Then, besides catching up a little, we spent most of the rest of the conversation talking about how unbelievable it was that we'd both remember it. Maybe this sounds like nothing, but to me, things like this are just beautiful.

BTW, I had the most incredible experience with someone I recognized, a pianist that I'd met exactly once, 31 years ago, at a house concert on the Upper West Side. I saw him sitting on the aisle 2 rows in front of me, went up and asked, "Is your name Roman?" Since he didn't answer right away and I thought maybe he didn't hear it clearly, I said his last name too. It wasn't that he hadn't heard.....I guess it was that he was searching his memory to remember who I was. And I couldn't believe it, but he remembered too! Before he started saying anything and as he was still having just a concentrating look, I said that we met once at a concert. He then said, "It wasn't really a concert..........and this was more than 30 years ago." Then, besides catching up a little, we spent most of the rest of the conversation talking about how unbelievable it was that we'd both remember it. Maybe this sounds like nothing, but to me, things like this are just beautiful.

Great story!

And no, it wasn't you then, it was someone who looked like you. I was sitting in the very back of the top balcony. It was the only seat left.

Great story Marc_C. =)Polyphonist, I was on the balcony too since I purchased the ticket rather late but I was on the very edge of the center, so I thought my seat was perfect.

What did you think of people leaving right after the 1st and 2nd encores? Remember when all of a sudden he sat down for the Ballade, and people actually listened to the whole thing standing up? I think Pollini was very generous.

I'll be catching his next all-Beethoven recital as well - the Waldstein never disapoints!

The episode at the end was hilarious...they couldn't decide whether he should bow again or not, so the lights went half up and they almost closed the door, and then reopened it and he came out again...

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 20323
Loc: New York

Originally Posted By: Polyphonist

I'll just say that on the whole, I was disappointed. Detail coming later.

My lady asked me if I thought a lot of people were disappointed. I said probably not, because "disappointment" requires that there was some greater expectation. I said that I thought that perhaps oddly, if people were "disappointed," it was mainly about things that had little to do with why most of us would be critical about the playing -- i.e. it would have been about technical imperfections rather than musical things.

I guess we're starting to give our reviews before we intended to.

Yeah, there were technical issues -- but IMO not that much, at least not if we take into account that he's not 20 any more, that he was known to be very ill for much of last year and that there were even rumors of his passing. Considering all of that, I thought that technically the performance was very impressive.

I was particularly unimpressed at the performance of the 2nd Ballade; he missed a lot of notes and I could hardly hear any of the voicing. The beginning of the first Presto con fuoco and most of the coda were particularly horrifying (I winced when he missed that first A octave in the former section). The Andantino sections were not very musical either. The second half of the concert was better than the first half. More details coming later.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 20323
Loc: New York

OK, let's see....

I always assumed Pollini was much more than the caricatured negative image of him that we often hear, i.e. just fingers, no soul or musicianship. And indeed he is, even at this fairly advanced age and even after a period of time when it seems he was having some serious medical issues. He has a beautiful basic sound, and consistently so, with good balance. His 'fingers' are still terrific although not flawless. He plays with conviction, with great continuity, and with excellent pulse. His tempos were almost always faster than I would have liked but they 'worked.' He conveys an excellent and clear basic understanding of the music, and it never sounds contrived or uncertain; he always seems to be playing exactly what he means. And, not to be taken for granted, he played from memory and had no problem with that.

But while it's unfair and wrong to write him off as "just fingers," there's a lot we could criticize about expressiveness. He doesn't seem much interested in the soft end of the dynamic range, which seems strange for someone who is so identified with Chopin. I was most struck that he doesn't explore nuances of softness, didn't spend much time at the softer end, and never "whispered." While he does play melodies beautifully (and very enjoyably, very "listenably"), I didn't find any subtlety. As I've said a few times about some of our members' recordings, Chopin's melodies are full of notes and sub-phrases that seem to cry out for special attention, little places that just 'grab' us and make us want to do 'something,' but he rarely does; he seems curiously un-grabbable, and tends to go right past those kinds of places as though nothing much was happening. This helps give his playing the admirable continuity that it has, but to me, a lot gets missed.

While his fingers are still terrific, and there weren't many 'wrong notes' at all, there were many key notes that didn't come out, at least not much. Those things seemed more from musical considerations than anything about fingers, because it seemed he didn't recognize enough how important those notes were and therefore didn't focus enough on them. And there were a few places, like the coda of Chopin's 2nd Ballade, where lots of notes just weren't coming out as they should have. We could still say that it had good momentum and even that it was exciting, but I think people who weren't familiar with the piece were probably completely lost, and with no sense of the syncopations because the passage wasn't solid enough for the basic flow to be evident. I think that a player who was more into the music than the notes would have tended to make the rhythms come through even if he wasn't getting all the notes, because they're such a basic part of what's going on in the music.

While his pulse was very good, he sometimes rushed, and worse, he rarely held long notes long enough and rarely waited long enough on rests.

I thought the Debussy was much better than the Chopin, although maybe that's because I don't know it as well and don't have such strong feelings, but I still felt there were the same kinds of issues with dynamics and lack of highlighting.

BUT THEN, for his second encore, he played a Revolutionary Etude like you wouldn't believe. I was like, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? We could again say that the dynamic contrasts could still have been greater, but screw that -- it was SUPER. I thought, forget everything that came before this, it was bullshit -- this piece was the real Pollini, what we came for, and that it was worth everything. When he then started the G minor Ballade for his last encore, I think the whole remaining audience was struck that he was going to play such a major piece, and I think he played it very well, better than the earlier Chopin pieces, but to tell you the truth, I really don't know because my head and thoughts were still spinning from the Etude.

BTW, from what we could tell, it seemed that medically he's fairly OK, and I was thrilled to see that. I'm very glad he played this New York recital, very glad I could finally see him live -- and God, I'm glad he's alive. And indeed, while we can quibble about his way of playing, he IS much more than the simplistic view of him that we often see.

P.S. (edit) Poly, I just saw your post. I liked his Chopin 2nd Ballade better than you did but our impressions are very similar. BTW it wasn't the first high A that he missed in the first fuoco section, it was the second high A. I thought it stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb too, and it's one of the places I was thinking of when I talked about key notes that were missed.

A lot of the notes in the Op 45 Prelude were glossed over or missed, and it felt like he rushed through it and didn't really feel the music. He doesn't wait long enough on rests. The end of that little cadenza section, which I really love, was all squashed together and much too fast.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 20323
Loc: New York

Originally Posted By: Polyphonist

I'm talking about the first low A, the octave. He missed that too.

Oh OK -- yes, I think I did notice that but didn't care so much about it and so I basically forgot it, especially when he then missed the second high A. And yeah -- I noticed that you said "octave" but since I was so struck by the missed high A, I figured that was what you meant and that you didn't mean "octave" literally.

Originally Posted By: Polyphonist

....in the Op 45 Prelude....The end of that little cadenza section, which I really love, was all squashed together and much too fast.

His 3rd scherzo was actually not bad. I liked the D flat middle section; that was one place where he did use good dynamic contrasts. However, the coda contained a few more glaring missed notes, including several in the first "jumping octaves" passage.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 20323
Loc: New York

Originally Posted By: Polyphonist

....3rd scherzo ....the coda contained a few more glaring missed notes, including several in the first "jumping octaves" passage.

Yeah.Almost nothing there was right.My wife turned and looked at me when he did that. I just nodded slightly to let her know she was right, hopefully without anyone else noticing we were having a nonverbal colloquy.

What did you think of the rest of the 1st Ballade? I'd say it was better than the other two, on a whole. Of course, there were a lot of issues in the coda. He missed several of the G minor 6/3 chords in the left hand at the beginning.

Well, what were your impressions of the Etude? I really liked the way he started the piece, with the fortissimo chord and then that LH cascading passage. There was one place where he screwed up one of the LH "up-and-down" half-measure patterns, played almost all of it a half step lower.